


The Children of the Empire

by JanaRumpandRCJawnn (JanaRumpandRCJawwn)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Human Experimentation, Medical Experimentation, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 14:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12278739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanaRumpandRCJawwn/pseuds/JanaRumpandRCJawnn
Summary: She stares at them for a long time while doing her stretches. The kid seems confused, staring around. Eventually, it walks over to her, and grabs the hem of her shirt.“What’s going on? I was good. Why am I here?” The kid’s voice is shaking and it looks like it’s about to cry.She bites her lips, considering just ignoring it. That was what people did. They ignored those kids. Because eventually they would become just another one of them.





	The Children of the Empire

**Author's Note:**

> This is just my self-indulgent sad ass Aranea and Prompto backstory if Prompto hadn't been taken from the Empire and if Aranea was also part of their Daemon projects  
> It gets a bit gruesome, mostly because I think whatever they did wasn't nice, even if they are kids

Her oldest memory is when the scientists do it. 

She remembers waking up on the white and bright medical wing. She remembers the doctors speaking. The words _Successful, Transplant_ and _the first to survive_ are all she can make up. She blinks a couple times adjusting her eyes to the light. 

“It is conscious.” 

She tries to sit up but one of the doctors presses her down. It’s all very foggy in her mind, she doesn’t know what she was doing before getting here, but she knows context. So when the same doctor that makes sure she stays laying down, demands :“Designation.”

The words come out of her mouth before she can even process. 

“AR 87. Project Highwind. Five years and six months.”

The doctors hummed to themselves and continue speaking among each other. She doesn’t care, their talks don’t make sense and it’s really boring overall. She wants to know why she is here. There is something weird about this whole situation, she felt tingling on her legs. It burned a bit. One of the doctors, requests that she raises her legs. 

As she does, she notices her legs are different. 

It looks metal, but it feels like her own leg. It’s like her leg was always metal. 

She tries her best to keep calm, the doctors hate when any of them cry. Still, she can’t contain her whole body shivering and the insistent sobbing on her chest. The words that the doctor says next are the ones she dreads the most.

“Sedate it.” 

-

The legs are what make her special. 

She isn’t able to walk with them for three weeks, but when she takes her first steps the doctors almost seem pleased. It feels lighter and even with her lack of coordination she can tell she is faster. The legs are better than average human ones. Everyone in the science department seems to celebrate when she jumps incredibly high for the first time. 

She is not. Because there was nothing wrong with the old ones, because they did it out of spite. 

She sometimes sits on the bed and traces the legs. They are black, but have an intricate red pattern to them. She isn’t sure what it represents, if anything. Sometimes the scientists do weird stuff for the sake of doing it. 

She wonders for a long time if they are going to do anything else to her. She stays awake listening to them talking. They consider doing the same to her arms, consider improving her arms. However, in the end they are content with their success with her legs. 

The first Highwind of many, they call her. 

-

She shares the room with every other subject between four and fourteen. 

There are bunkers and overall the place is scrubbed clean. No personal things, nothing that can distinguish them. Not even the beds, they change every other day. There is protocol about everything. How they dress, their social times, and what they have to do every day. 

She doesn’t have anyone she is particularly close to. 

There was this one older girl, project Aracne number 34, but she turned fourteen and was taken to another floor. It made AR very sad. Aracne 34 used to help her tie her hair or would sometimes whisper important things about the future. She was one of the few ones to risk talking to the young ones that were dropped among them.. 

It doesn’t seem like anyone can ever occupy the same space as Aracne 34, but it’s stupid to think any of them aren’t replaceable. 

She is seven and doing her late night stretches when they bring the kid in. She is a kid herself, but the one they bring is so different. Besides, the scientists never treated any of them like kids, so is sort of beside the point if they are kids or not. 

The kid is not very tall. It’s a blond which is an honest to god surprise, her own her is light but more to a gray than a yellow. The kid also already comes with something changed (most of them only get something changed after a while in the dorm), the eyes are purple and seem to shine staring at each other inhabitant. It’s weird, because they don’t usually bring them to the room different. 

The scientists put the kid in the grid in the place Aracne used to be. So the kid sits in the bed to her left and she just watches as the scientist that brought them here doing the last instructions and checking on the child’s well being. 

She stares at them for a long time while doing her stretches. The kid seems confused, staring around. Eventually, it walks over to her, and grabs the hem of her shirt. 

“What’s going on? I was good. Why am I here?” The kid’s voice is shaking and it looks like it’s about to cry. 

She bites her lips, considering just ignoring it. That was what people did. They ignored those kids. Because eventually they would become just another one of them. 

Still, she thought about how Aracne was the closest thing she had to memorable person on this hellhole. So she sighed deeply and started whispering the important things the kid had to know. 

-

The kid was a young boy. 

His thing was Project Argentum, and it was weirdly enough the only one of his class. He was special, she could tell it. And it was not only because he was one of a kind. His alterations were subtle and she couldn’t tell what they were for. 

He would follow AR almost everywhere he could. Which she found both parts annoying and endearing. Argentum would go as far as to sneak into her bed when he had nightmares - which was as often as almost every other day. 

Of course that went bad though, because the scientists could turn a blind eye to a bit of an interaction, but the kid was growing far too attached. And far too attached is not good for a thing. 

She thinks she wasn’t attached. 

Until she sees them dragging the boy to isolation and reeducation. 

She keeps her best blank expression, but the tears in his freckled cheeks make her bite her lip and feel like one of the scientists. She just let them take him, even if he looks so tiny and so defenseless. It was not like one of the Iron project being taken, or even her. The kid hadn’t been made for this abuse. 

When he comes back two weeks later to the dorm, she thought he would be broken like the rest of them, but instead he actually smiles at her and continues being sweet.

That breaks her more than all the things they had done to her. 

\--

The new doctors arrive when she is ten years and eight months and they are weird. 

AR knows they are different when one of them calls her a she instead of an it. AR just stares at them and corrects the young doctor. They seem really awkward and hurry to go back to become completely inconspicuous. 

She starts noticing the small changes. And it doesn’t make any sense. 

All doctors are gross and don’t care. They treat her and every other kid like shit. She has heard of people getting parts hurt just to see how they fare with pain. To make ‘sense of things’. To see if they bled and felt pain like humans did. 

The new doctors were different though. 

The kid also notices it. One of the doctors are actually interferes when they try to drag him off to isolation again. She says it will be bad for his project. AR still doesn’t know what it is the project is but she knows it’s not war.

He does not go training with the rest of them, she doubts the boy could even hold a gun or a weapon, as weak as he looks. She wonders why even would they try to build something that wasn’t for war, and a shiver runs down her spine. 

Because if they aren’t hurting him now, they are gonna do something much worst. 

-

She discovers how worst the day her year changes from ten to eleven. 

She is going back to the room after a day of training. There are several other Highwinds - she was the first, but not the last and now several other girls and boys have the same legs as her. 

The magitek troopers escorting them back to the room are silent and she wonders if they too were like them. If once they were kids scared and with no name. 

One of the doors is open, even if none of the doors in the experimentation room are ever open. It almost feels like someone wants the kids to see. AR looks, because she was trained for it. To do scouting missions. She stares inside and the nausea hits her hard. 

The kid is sitting on a medical desk, and his chest is open. She can see his heart beating and the way his lungs expand and retract. She wonders why the kid isn’t making a big fuss of it. She stares at his face and it gets worst. He is crying, but they have removed his eyes so it’s a mix of tears and blood that goes down his cheeks. His mouth is half open like he is making noise but nothing comes out of it. 

It gets her angrier than anything. AR stops moving, her hands going into fists. 

The scientist are talking to each other, and one of them laugh pointing at his body. One of the presses a needle to the boy’s neck, but she can’t see what for as one of the Magitek troopers grabs her arm and drags her away.

When she sees the boy later that day he doesn’t have a scratch on his body and his eyes are filled with confusion when she asks if he is okay. 

-

The weird doctors are the ones to get them out. She remembers very little of how it all happened, she remembers feeling sedated and getting carried to a car. She remembers asking about the boy, and she remembers the doctor smiling at her and gently turning her head to the right, where she could see the boy fast asleep. 

When she sees the world again, she is laying on a bed in a room that is too comfy and she looks around and there are these stuffed colorful animals. She pushes it away from herself and gets up, walking away from all this. It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel right for her. She hears them speaking before she sees them. 

“I can’t believe we did it. Twelve kids saved.” It is a woman, the doctor? “I wish we could take them all away from there, though”

“Even with all the help we are getting, we are not ever gonna get them all safe” Another voice adds, sounding tired.

“Don’t even remind me, of the _help_. The Lucian keep being cryptic saying that they can only trust us if the kids prove worth it. Tenebrae is saying it’s none of their business. In the end the most useful person to was ended up being that creepy asshole, without him we wouldn’t have gotten the last boy, the one of kind.”

She shakes a bit, if they had let the boy behind she would have ran and gone back to him. It takes a lot of her courage to walk in, staring at the group of adults sitting on a bunch of sofas and drinking things from mugs. They all get worked up when she shows up, a woman gets up and crouches in front of her - she is smiling and it feels wrong.

“Hey there, little lady. Don’t you wanna sleep some more? It’s pretty late.”

AR doesn’t think twice before staring coldly at all of them and demands. “I wanna see the boy.”

“He is asleep-” One man tries to cut in, but the smiling woman stops him. 

Instead she gets up and gestures to a door near the one AR came out off. The room she goes in has four little kids, the girl doesn’t pay attention to anyone but the young boy curled hugging a weird plushie of an animal she doesn’t know. All she knows is that it is very yellow. 

He is asleep though, and she feels weirdly calmer with that notion.

And only then it hits her that she is out. That this is not a sterile room, and even though the woman on her side is a doctor, she is not going back. 

And she doesn’t know how to feel about it.

\--

The first time she goes to the outside world it’s raining.

They have been staying on the house for a few days. The adults are trying to get them to a different place, but it’s hard. 

Today is the day they are finally getting on the train. It’s the first time she is outside, and AR - Aranea, they say that’s her name now, she still has trouble remembering it sometimes - is completely mesmerized by it. It’s all impossibly big and there are some many people, different people up and about. She wants to run and jump, and see if the legs they gave her can take her to the top of the buildings so she can see where the water falling comes from. However, she can’t, she has to _look normal_. So she just walks, carrying her backpack and holding Prompto’s hand. She has an easier time remembering his name, it just suits him better to be a person. 

The adults move away when they are walking down the square towards the train station, Aranea knows what she has to do, she just keeps walking. Her ladybug umbrella covering the two of them as she walks with a mission. No one looks twice at those two very imperial looking kids the perfect example of the infiltration unities for the Imperal army. They get into the train with no problem, and she knows what to do to keep it like that. They sit alone in a bench, and Prompto presses his face to the window right away. Wanting to catch every detail of their trip. 

She makes a mental note to herself of their travel plan.

Tenebrae, Altissia, Duscae, Insomnia. 

And then she doesn’t quite know. The idea of stopping is scary, but she knows she is supposed to follow the adults plan. They insisted it was the only way they would be safe from the Empire

She doesn’t wanna risk going back.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it fee free to give kudos and leave comments, feedback is always appreciated.  
> Kissus  
> -Jawwn


End file.
